Not Just News Corp.: Media Companies Have Long Made Political Donations

News Corp.’s million-dollar donation to the Republican Governors Association in June may have received a wave of press and critics yelling, “Told ya so.” But the company, owned by conservative Rupert Murdoch, has not been the only corporate conglomerate featuring prominent television media organizations to have donated big money to politics.

The parent companies of six major media outlets have all donated anywhere from five to seven figures to political organizations during the 2010 election cycle alone, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The corporations include:

News Corp. (Fox News Channel, FX, FUEL TV, others)

General Electric (NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, USA, Bravo, others)

National Amusements (CBS Corp. and Viacom)

Comcast Corp. (G4, E!, others)

Time Warner (CNN, TBS, Cinemax, TNT, Warner Bros./CW, others)

Walt Disney Co. (ABC, ESPN, others)

These organizations have — either through corporate treasuries, sponsored political action committees or both — donated almost $7 million to political action committees and so-called “527 committees” during 2009 and 2010 and nearly $38 million since the 1990 election cycle.

These figures do not reflect additional money donated by individuals who work for the companies.

PACs and 527s are similar in that they’re both vehicles used to influence federal politics. But they differ in terms of contribution limits (527s have none) and how the money they raise is used. For example, while PACs may run advertisements expressly advocating for or against candidates, and endorse specific parties or candidates, a 527 must register with the Federal Election Commission in order to do so.

Tom Rosenstiel, the director for the Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism, says the issues arising from media having a hand in the political system are not new, and he argues that journalism used to be much more partisan than it is today.

“While corporations can now give to candidates, there were ways they could make political contributions even before,” he said, pointing to GE’s multimillion-dollar efforts in lobbying as one example.

During the past two decades, GE has donated more than $12.5 million to federal political entities, slightly favoring the right by one percentage point. During the same time period, Walt Disney Co. donated nearly $3 million and favored Democrats by an average of 54 percent to 46 percent. GE has contributed $1.62 million during this election cycle.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, has donated more upwards of $7.2 million to PACs in the last nine years, including nearly $1.9 million in the last two years. Time Warner, owner of CNN and others, has provided just shy of $5 million to federal political candidates and committees since the 1990 election cycle and almost $200,000 during the current election cycle.

However, National Amusements, which owns Viacom — and therefore, Comedy Central, on which Stewart’s show appears – has so far donated more than $330,000 to political organizations during the 2010 election cycle for aa total of almost $900,000 since the 2006 election cycle. Before it was purchased by National Amusements in 2005, Viacom gave just less than $2 million to political committees from 1999 to 2004. In both cases, the money typically favored Democrats.

While some of the corporations in question are mainly media owners and operators, some giants such as GE have many other business endeavors. The Center’s data includes all subsidiaries of these companies in order to show the parent corporations’ full political influence.

There is a concern about what this might mean for the future of corporate media involvement in the electoral system. Some new political committees created this year in response to the Supreme Court’s high-profile campaign finance decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and other recent legal rulings can raise unlimited sums for advertisements so long as they do not contribute to candidates, as the OpenSecrets Blog previously reported.

Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for the Society of Professional Journalists, expressed unease about the financial as well as philosophical motivations behind such a generous donation from companies that own media outlets.

Although News Corp. made the large donation to Republicans, “Fox News is top-rated news network,” he said. “And they are still gaining ratings from having a Democrat in office.”

While Jack Horner, a spokesman for News Corp., has said that it is “false that a corporate donation would have any bearing on our news-gathering activities,” others argue that’s not the point.

Rosenstiel, of Pew, said judging these issues is not based on right and wrong — but how an audience reacts to them.

“Journalism is a reputational business,” he said. “The appearance of a conflict of interest is the important thing, not necessarily whether or not [the donation] does influence content.”

The overall trend shows that all the media conglomerates donated disproportionately more to Democrats from 1990 to 1994. In 1996, they began to favor Republicans with an average margin of about 8 percentage points until 2008, when Democrats had all six (including News Corp.) giving them half, or more, of all donations.

Murdoch’s News Corp. has a history of seven-figure donations, the Australian Sky News reported. In 1996, he gave $1 million to the California Republican Party, which — using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator — would equal almost $1.4 million in 2010 dollars.

Furthermore, other media companies have shown to break from their perceived leanings.

GE, which owns NBC, CNBC and the perceived left-leaning MSNBC, has directed 59 percent of its $1.62 million this 2010 election cycle to Republican political entities. Aso, between the 1990 and 1998 election cycles, Fox Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp., donated more than 60 percent of its nearly quarter-million dollar total to Democratic political interests, according to Center data.

The Pew program director made sure to point out that News Corp. is more than just Fox News

“Not all of their products are accused of having that bias,” Rosenstiel said. “It’s a much bigger company than that.”

News Corp.’s most recent donation to the Republican Governor’s Association is notable, however, because most organizations – media and otherwise — choose to make numerous, smaller donations in lieu of an eye-catching lump sum.

An examination of the 527-specific data, of which there are less donations, shows that the single $1 million contribution from News Corp. makes up 41 percent of all parent company contributions to Republicans, and 58 percent of all donations to 527 groups, from the six media corporations in question since last year.

Rosenstiel said that the stakes have effectively been raised.

“Politics has changed. There’s more money involved in it,” he said. “It costs more to be in politics; politicians spend more of their time raising money and they need to raise more money, so there’s more money flowing.”

Media Contact

Viveca Novak
(202) 354-0111
press@crp.org

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